New perspective on the accessibility of railway transport for the vulnerable traveller

Vulnerable travellers experience various problems in the transport environment. These may reduce public travel confidence and consequently lead to decreased mobility. A goal of our research is to find out how to improve the accessibility to railway travelling, especially, for persons with functional limitations. By reducing barriers, the ability of travelling would be improved, and consequently allow for more flexible travel behaviors. In order to develop a model and a method of measurement for accessibility, we (a) constructed a reference group of representative 'typical older persons' (65–85 years) from questionnaire data, and (b) developed an accessibility measure for persons with functional limitations. In this measure barriers have different weights for the different persons depending on their functional ability and travel behavior. This gives the probability of facing a certain barrier when travelling to a certain destination; that is, a measure of accessibility for the individual. The more weight placed on a certain barrier, the less probable it is that the particular journey will take place. These weights will be obtained in forthcoming research on the perception of a set of various travel scenarios representing barriers.